Cinema: Nuclear Explosion in Chicago

ORDINARY PEOPLE Directed by Robert Redford; Screenplay by Alvin Sargent

They are ordinary people, if by that one means that they enjoy
conventional middle-class prosperity and adhere to traditional family
values. If the problem that the Jarrett family facesan adolescent son
trying to recover from a mental breakdown signaled by a suicide
attemptis perhaps an extreme one, it is hardly unknown in bourgeois
America. Nor are the tensions that have been moving for a long time
beneath the surface of the Jarretts' existencean inability to express
genuine affection or even speak franklyexactly exotic.